Bad Asian Daughter

Me: (trying to connect by talking about someone from the past) Oh, I had a visit from so-and-so, you know, from junior high.

Mom: What's she doing now?

Me: She's married with three kids...

Dad: Good! That's a normal life!

[silence]

[then laughter from me as I realize THIS is the environment I grew up in...and now I live in the Bay Area where I am practicing radical tolerance of myself]

Me: ...AND, she hasn't spoken to either of her parents in YEARS.

[silence]

Last night I watched the film Dead Poets Society again for the second time in over twenty years. With fresh eyes. Having had new experiences in my life.

When the movie first came out in 1989, I was a freshman in high school. All of the quotes from English literature were still subjects yet to be covered in my classes. Things I had to look forward to in AP English, my senior year. There were quotes from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, that my brother (seven years older than me) had used in his valedictory speech, so I remembered them. But the entire high school experience and college application process were still ahead of me at that time.

So in 1989, I saw the movie as a story about some kids at boarding school. Also a foreign concept to me. I had yet to attend Harvard, where classmates across the hall or upstairs from me had actually gone to schools like “Welton Academy”, wore uniforms, had stayed in dorms before, and came from families whose last names were written on the fronts of buildings on the Harvard campus.

I remember not really understanding the suicide of Neil Perry in the movie (spoiler alert). It didn’t register as something real. I had not yet experienced my own desperation, my own feelings of being trapped, my own anger at being dismissed for the passions of my wild heart. I saw it as another plot element, secondary to a story about an inspiring and unconventional teacher who loved poetry.

But last night, I saw it differently. I saw John Keating (Robin Williams’ character) as a life coach, awakening the creativity, imagination, and passion in his students, and encouraging them -- imploring them -- to stretch beyond their comfort zones and to see beyond the walls of the Gothic architecture around them. I saw each of the boys become one notch braver, starting from where they were and taking risks they previously thought impossible.

In the scene where Mr. Keating instructs the entire class to tear out all the pages of the introductory section to their poetry textbook, written by a dry academic attempting to establish “metrics” for good poetry, I saw in the boys’ experience a parallel to my own personal experience, at age 35, of being told, “Play the wrong note.” The boys, normally obedient to any teacher’s request, pause a beat upon hearing Mr. Keating’s instructions. Against the backdrop of an institution valuing order, tradition, obedience, and conformity, the act of tearing out the pages of a textbook represented rebellion of the highest order. It would be the first step in opening the door to their full humanity, dangerous and wonderful.

The arc of Neil Perry’s character should be included as a case study for anyone attempting to understand the Palo Alto high school student suicides. I have watched this conversation evolve, erupt, and blossom over the past year into national conversation on mental illness, school homework policies, college admissions criteria, and stress management. However, sometimes it’s a complex story of an individual that illuminates the unexplainable, showing us that we cannot grasp with our logical mind what the human heart and soul have the capacity to be. That our own weaknesses will likely stay hidden from our own view. And that at the end of the day, all we may have to offer is our ability to feel - even our grief - deeply and fully.

The last words exchanged between Neil Perry and his father are quoted below:

[Neil's father has just driven him home from his performance in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."] Mr. Perry: We're trying very hard to understand why it is that you insist on defying us. Whatever the reason, we're not gonna let you ruin your life. Tomorrow I'm withdrawing you from Welton and enrolling you in Braighton Military School. You're going to Harvard, and you're gonna be a doctor. Neil Perry: But, that's ten more years! Father, that's a *lifetime*! Mr. Perry: Oh, stop it! Don't be so dramatic! You make it sound like a prison term! You don't understand, Neil! You have opportunities that I never even dreamt of, and I am not going to let you waste them! Neil Perry: I've got to tell you what I feel! Mrs. Perry: We've been so worried about you! Mr. Perry: *What*? What? Tell me what you feel! What is it? Is it more of this, this *acting* business? Because you can forget that! What? Neil Perry: [pauses] Nothing. Mr. Perry: [pauses] Nothing? Well, then, let's go to bed.

That Mr. Perry considers his son’s excitement about acting to be an “insistence on defying us” reflects the narcissistic view that everything a child does is directed personally toward the parent.

“You’re going to Harvard, and you’re gonna be a doctor.” Need I say more? Been there, done that.

And the response to Neil’s final effort to claim his voice, “I’ve got to tell you what I feel!”, is met with hostility and contempt. “What! What! Tell me what you feel! What is it! Is it more of this, this ‘acting’ business? Because you can forget that!”

Last spring, when I attended the community meeting at Palo Alto High School, filled with hundreds of parents seeking to learn more about “why” and “how” and what they can do about teen suicides, I noticed the handouts giving instructions about how to listen, how to ask “open-ended questions”, how to pay attention to changes in their child’s moods.

They talked about encouraging students to seek help. To admit to their own illness. That there is no stigma to having a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder.

And now I look at the story of Neil Perry. Was he mentally ill? Perhaps at the moment he pulled the trigger. But at every moment of the story before he went to his father’s desk drawer to get the gun he used to kill himself, we wouldn’t have considered him mentally ill. We would have called him a model student, balancing all of his academics with his extracurricular interests. Following his passions. Leading.

Did he seek help? Yes. He went to the only person he could trust with the tenderness of his own dreams. Mr. Keating. Who gave him this speech:

Neil Perry: I just talked to my father. He's making me quit the play at Henley Hall. Acting's everything to me. I- But he doesn't know! He- I can see his point; we're not a rich family, like Charlie's. We- But he's planning the rest of my life for me, and I- He's never asked me what I want! John Keating: Have you ever told your father what you just told me? About your passion for acting? You ever showed him that? Neil Perry: I can't. John Keating: Why not? Neil Perry: I can't talk to him this way. John Keating: Then you're acting for him, too. You're playing the part of the dutiful son. Now, I know this sounds impossible, but you have to talk to him. You have to show him who you are, what your heart is! Neil Perry: I know what he'll say! He'll tell me that acting's a whim and I should forget it. They're counting on me; he'll just tell me to put it out of my mind for my own good. John Keating: You are not an indentured servant! It's not a whim for you, you prove it to him by your conviction and your passion! You show that to him, and if he still doesn't believe you - well, by then, you'll be out of school and can do anything you want. Neil Perry: No. What about the play? The show's tomorrow night! John Keating: Then you have to talk to him before tomorrow night. Neil Perry: Isn't there an easier way? John Keating: No. Neil Perry: [laughs] I'm trapped! John Keating: No you're not.

“I’m trapped!”, Neil says with a laugh.

He keeps silent and ends up lying to Mr. Keating about having confronted his dad. He chooses to go ahead with the play and take his chances with his dad. Was this the decision that made him mentally ill? We have no reason to suspect that he is planning his suicide. In fact, it may have been something that occurred to him only after receiving the news that he would be forced to withdraw from school the next day, and follow his father’s orders.

The point is: We. Don’t. Know.

As the movie came to a close, I wondered why this film hasn’t been talked about in the context of Palo Alto. Of course, the movie gives us clues to this also. Welton Academy’s headmaster responds to the suicide by launching a “thorough investigation” into the matter, which leads to the dismissal of Mr. Keating. Easier to clean things up that way. When there’s someone to blame.

In the case of Palo Alto, there is a full-scale community effort directed at mental health response teams, wellness counselors, railway security monitoring, and the like.

Would these policies -- or even gun control -- have helped prevent someone like Neil Perry from pulling the trigger?

Fellow B.A.D.A.S.S. (Bad Asian Daughters And Soul Sisters): Maybe you recognize this moment: The Crossroads of Can, Should, and Must. Inspired by artist and author Elle Luna’s book, The Crossroads of Should and Must.

Someone recently showed me this New York Times op-ed piece on the Palo Alto suicides. It’s interesting to see that this discussion has made it to the New York Times. And also interesting to see that this author extensively quotes the opinion piece written by Palo Alto psychiatrist Adam Strassberg. This piece is one of the more popular posts in response to the situation here.

But my question is, does it really help to pathologize the social and cultural norms that have developed in this region of the world? Do we really reach people when we make them “not normal”? Does it actually inspire those who need most to find another way - their own way?

I’ve been in a series of very lively conversations on this hot-button topic. People seem to need to respond in some way to something as grave as teen suicide. It’s amazing to me how a series of suicides can serve as a catalyst for a community to come together in ways that other events do not. I am also struck by how suicide “statistics” are used to create sociopolitical movements centered around the problems of certain demographic groups.

We read what we want to read into a situation that defies explanation. We respond with the strategies most comfortable to us - whether that is pathologizing certain social behaviors, demanding more data and statistics, studying something more closely (while also remaining emotionally distant from the heart of the experience), forming committees and task forces, or having speculative one-on-one conversations with our neighbors and friends.

For me, I read my own experience into this situation. I recognize that at one time, I believed that Palo Alto was the epicenter of all that was cool about the Bay Area (and therefore, the Western world). There was an allure that spread far and wide, especially to the smaller Midwestern cities I had lived in after college - Ann Arbor, Minneapolis and Cleveland. I had a sense that I was missing out by not at least trying to live in the Bay Area for once in my life.

When I moved to California in 2004 to follow a dream of starting a violin school, I followed an intuitive sense, which was backed up by the research I did, that this area was ripe with parents who would invest heavily in educational enrichment opportunities for their children. The younger the better. I had something powerfully seductive to offer them, and I could get paid immediately.

What I offered was real. But I was also very aware of the game I was playing. I copied the processes that the best schools on the Peninsula used. I noted how Bing Nursery School at Stanford had a 5-year waiting list that prompted parents to fill out their children’s application forms from the delivery rooms after they gave birth. I noticed how preschools that were feeder systems for the best private schools in Menlo Park and Atherton had five-figure tuition rates, and impossibly long waiting lists also.

Did I have a lingering sense of the “wrongness” of all this, even as I played the game of being an educational entrepreneur? Yes, I did. And I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the implications of that game as time went on.

At that time, I only knew authoritarian models of leadership. Collaboration was a foreign and somewhat threatening concept to me. What I had experienced up until that point in my life was extreme expectations for perfection. And those standards of perfection were defined by whoever was standing in the front of the room. Yes. I had a Tiger Mother. Yes. Amy Chua’s book was essentially a scene-by-scene description of my childhood, right down to being locked out on my front porch when I was four years old. I cut out a chunk of my own hair too, but I wasn’t twelve, I was more like eight years old. I traveled internationally to perform and compete in both violin and piano. And there was always drama on those trips that we try not to speak about.

Yes, there was a monomaniacal focus on getting everything exactly right all the time. Or else. And I never dared test the concept of what “or else” actually meant.

So now that I am an adult, feeling deeply moved and touched by the pain that is being expressed through these kids in Palo Alto, how does it feel to read a psychiatrist write, “The ‘Koala Dad’ is the far better parent than the “Tiger Mom’”? How does it feel to read that as a stand-alone statement implying that it has meaning on its own?

I feel marginalized and insulted by it. And the best quote I can find in response to it is this, from Dr. Mario Martinez, clinical neuropsychologist and creator of a theory of mind-body-culture called biocognition:

Health gurus medicalize living conditions they fail to understand, and medicalizing is a form of hegemony. In anthropology, hegemony means domination of one cultural belief over another, with such insidious power that the dominated fail to see the dominator's impositions.

There is a larger context here - a cultural one - that is beyond the limits of reductionist science, school homework policies, getting the right number of hours of sleep, or “becoming a Koala Dad”.

Article by Kristina Wong. Choice quotes:

“Spend $100 to tell a stranger your problems? Are you crazy? Why, yes, maybe I am. But I don’t know because my mom won’t give me the money to see a shrink...I ran across a statistic in 2004 that reported Asian American women as having some of the highest rates of suicide in this country. I decided I would make a theater show about it and call it "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." When I received major arts grant funding to make it, my mother said, “I’m so proud of you.  Just don’t talk about me or the family in your show.”

I talk about the confluence of issues converging right now for me, leading to the question:

What do gay sons in China, Mormons questioning their faith, Asian-American teen suicides in Palo Alto, and physician burnout have in common?

This was encouraging and inspiring to see. It showed me the power of storytelling, community, support, and activism.

It was also very striking to hear the exact words of the parents in the film, in reaction to their son’s sharing with them that he is gay:

“How could you do this to us after we raised you to this point?

“How could you become THIS?

“If you decide to do this, you can leave our home and never come back again!

“You don’t exist as a son to me anymore!”

The fact that I have heard all of these phrases come out of my own parents’ mouths at several different times in my life - related to expressing my real choice of college major (which I immediately rescinded and switched to the default of Biochemical Sciences), and my brother’s choice of fiancee (an engagement which he later broke off) - shows me that at some level, these ideas are genetic. They have been handed down in the culture through generations, like religious beliefs are taught through systematic immersion, repetition, and indoctrination.

And I love the way this film shows the FEELING on both sides - the parents and the child.

How an expectation for perfection and a college-geared definition of success has prevented us from using high school as a time to figure out what we love and who we are.

A beautiful 30-minute documentary made by a student at Scarsdale High School, in Westchester County, New York.

A meandering reflection on the spilling forth of realizations that have come online for me since I committed to “offering a program for doctors”.

One of the “aha” moments was, “Doctor” is not who you are.

The other is the feeling of wanting to offer conversations and community versus a “service” that “solves” a “problem”.

What happens when you recommit to your heart’s highest choices?

I share a big “aha” around retelling my whole life story from the perspective of “I recommit” and how each of my choices was to continue on the path of finding my heart’s truth. As I learn and collect more experiences, my heart’s truth evolves and expands. And so do I. So my choices evolve and expand.

To keep myself within a confined box of a certain outer reality would not be true my own heart’s journey (me, personally, not generally). Throughout many different outer circumstances I have experienced, my constant and relentless commitment has been to live my heart’s ever-expanding truth.

We get to choose.

We can go deep and do the work we are here to do in this life.

Or we can leave our work for future generations to do.

Once again, I am inspired by andrewplaysmusic who shared a video interview of a member of the original Broadway cast of The Book Of Mormon, on being gay and Mormon.

This led me to the fascinating discovery of John Dehlin’s websites, http://mormonstories.org, http://gaymormonstories.org, and others related to "exploring, celebrating, and challenging the Mormon culture in constructive ways”. I was inspired by all the free content, offered with no requirement to sign up on an email list (THAT’s refreshing!), and the clear mission to share human stories in a healing, transformative way.

As I scrolled through the pages, I remembered that one of my inspirations for choosing to train with Martha Beck as a life coach was her story of leaving the Mormon church. Before enrolling in her program, I read “Leaving the Saints” from cover to cover. Only then did I dive into her other books on self-help. I had to know how someone could manage to find whatever inner resources are required to break free from something as central to her identity as being raised Mormon. Not only Mormon, but the daughter of a chief apologist for the Mormon Church, writing academic papers and publications in defense of the Church’s views, at Brigham Young University.

This is all highly charged stuff, and I was taught as a very young child “never to discuss religion or politics”.

I now see the parallels between certain cultures and certain orthodox religions. All are based on a set of rules. All are based on expectations of following those rules, or facing the consequences, including banishment from the tribe and the accompanying disasters of homelessness, loss of identity, and “going to hell” in some form. All are based on secrecy, shame, blame, guilt, and judgment at some level. In other words, fear is used to keep people “inside” and prevent them from exploring anything “outside”. It is not an open door swinging in and out. You are either “one of us” or “one of them”. Right and wrong, good and evil, and other dualities are core vehicles for reinforcing the fears that keep curiosity and self-acknowledgment constrained.

I started out this blog with a story saying that I never had a religion growing up. My mom was baptized Catholic but never practiced. I’m not sure she ever read the Bible or owned one. But she had me baptized Catholic, and we went to church a few times throughout my life, usually on Christmas or Easter. My dad was a closet Buddhist, reading texts late at night but also never really practicing or ever attending a temple. He left that to his mom, my grandmother, whose personal practice of Buddhism has grown deeper throughout her life. She still does elaborate rituals both at home and at her Buddhist temple community in Taipei, Taiwan.

I once asked my parents what religion we were. Only because in my school in Libertyville, Illinois, you were either Catholic or Presbyterian. There was one Jewish kid in my elementary school, and two in my junior high school class. No Blacks. I was the only Asian in elementary school. You get the picture. I wanted to know where we went to church, because I was asked at school and I didn’t know the answer.

I once tried saying, “I don’t go to church.” That didn’t go over very well. I remember a boy saying to me, “What do you MEAN you don't GO to church?”. I guess that was when I began to think something was really wrong with me. But I couldn’t really lie. Until the next Christmas, when my mom took my brother and me to St. Joseph’s Church. Now I could say, “We go to St. Joe’s.”

I now see that one of the great gifts of my childhood was not having any religious education whatsoever. My mind is a completely blank slate, to the point of being embarrassingly ignorant about religious stories, texts, characters, or beliefs. And now, as I weave my own experience of spirituality from my collage of teachers in the healing arts, religion, and consciousness, I am refreshed, surprised, and delighted as I discover the connections among so many of the world’s “religious” texts in their essential teachings.

What I also see is that the Chinese culture, at its core, is an orthodox religion. The rules that were recited and handed down through generations, the fear that is used to keep children in line with expectations, the harsh threats of banishment, disowning, and withdrawal of financial support (which is the only tangible form of expressed love, other than food) if a son or daughter does not live up to something that equals “my sacrifice as a parent was worth it” constitute the pillars of this orthodoxy. And what’s worse than a religion about this particular kind of mental prison is that there’s no community. There is no place of gathering where our stories are shared, where we can feel seen and appreciated even in our own suffering and imperfection, or where we can seek some solace, some possibility of transformation through a collective mythology of redemption. If we attempt to talk about our inner experiences with an “outsider” (not just someone outside the culture but someone outside the unit of survival of the immediate family), we face the bitter consequences of shame, blame, guilt, and other threats to our sense of safety as an individual being. It is often “easier” to remain silently compliant, until a breaking point is reached, or financial freedom brings the opportunity to escape the prison, if only on the external level.

There is no higher power in this religion. The only power is the force of human will. And powerful it is. Developed over thousands of generations, hardened through great suffering, and silenced by collective agreement of shame, the human will of the Chinese is a force to be reckoned with.

It is the dragon of our time. We sons and daughters have remained in fearful subjugation of this orthodoxy, escaping it through material success, outer accomplishments, the “right” relationships, and the “right” resume. All in an attempt to earn our worthiness to be alive.

We have not known that we can look directly into the eyes of this dragon. Some have chosen to slay the dragon - overcome it by murder, suicide, or other acts of masculine energetic domination. We can choose to love the dragon, meeting it with the divine feminine presence of total receptivity. Not the “giving in” and crumpling of the soul that so many have defaulted to, because it is “easier” (i.e., more comfortable) than standing in the truth of our hearts. The direct, fearless, constant gaze of divine love holds a different kind of power. Not the power of domination and control, but the power of seeing truth. Seeing into the eyes of this dragon - the dragon of our own orthodoxy - holds the power of transmuting the “threat” of the dragon into the very material of our greatest purpose fulfilled - our unique selves fully expressed, our own lives fully lived.

This would require a community of support. A place to tell our stories. An unwavering gaze of love as we touch what we don’t want to know about ourselves.

Is it big? Yes.

I found out about this book, “Death Fugue”, by the Chinese female author Sheng Keyi, tonight. I am inspired and encouraged by the story of Chinese artists, risking everything to tell their stories, in their own way.

Some days I feel the weight of something - a longstanding wave of feeling that is not all mine. When I read about what has happened in China (Sheng Keyi grew up in the same province where my mother was born), I imagine that I am carrying the feelings of my lineage. I am transforming the consciousness of many, when I transform my consciousness within me.

I feel both the impulse to be gentler with myself as I evolve, and the urgency to express within my lifetime what my heart is here to say.

These passages from the review of “Death Fugue” (link above) are especially telling:

“When I wrote it I knew it couldn’t be published in China,” she said. “I discussed it with a friend — she writes poetry at the university of Chongqing — and she said, ‘You write it because you want to.’ ”